Though Phillips engaged in several noted career journeys (including an unsuccessful 1968 run for the Senate on the Peace and Freedom ticket), he will always be remembered as a folksinger. Making full use of the amazing IWW heritage of songs, Utah came to champion the IWW and their Little Red Songbook. His rounded baritone adorns more than one collection of recordings. In between writing many powerful originals songs, such as "All Used Up," Utah brought to life the ballads of Joe Hill, Ralph Chaplin, T-Bone Slim, and the "Unknown Proletariat."
Utah became something of a cult figure with the college crowd in later years. Two CDs with Ani DiFranco also brought him a bit of notoriety. But Utah always remained, well, Utah.
At a benefit concert on April 24, a month before he died, Utah spoke to a full auditorium. It didn’t matter that it was his disembodied voice speaking over a cellphone held up to a microphone by Pete Seeger, one of the event’s headliners. I was happy to be there to hear Utah’s response to our benefit concert on his behalf, happier still to witness his warm exchange with Seeger, another elder fighting the good fight. The room on that sunny spring day in Rosendale, New York was dedicated to Utah Phillips. We’d come to help this man who’d been there for the greater "us" for decades. Utah told us of his life and plans for the future. Sure, he sounded tired, but we all thought that Utah would get through this latest challenge. He told us so. None would believe that he would pass away about a month later. At least we can say that it took a lot to silence him. But the echo of his work rings loudly, as sonorous as the music onstage that day from Seeger, Dar Williams, Redwood Moose, Sarah Underhill, Norm Wennet, Bill Vanaver, Flames of Discontent, and others.
Each time we take up a guitar, put pen to paper, speak our minds, or count our blessings, let’s pause a moment for Utah Phillips.
Z
John Pietaro is a labor organizer and cultural worker from New York (www. flamesofdiscontent.org).
John Pietaro is a writer, musician, cultural organizer and publicist from Brooklyn NY. His essays, reviews and fiction have appeared in Z, the Nation, CounterPunch, the NYC Jazz Record, Political Affairs, the People's World, AllABoutJazz, Struggle, and many other publications as well as his own blog The Cultural Worker ( http://TheCulturalWorker.blogspot.com ). He wrote a chapter in the Harvey Pekar/Paul Buhle book SDS: A GRAPHIC HISTORY (Hill & Wang 2008) and self-published a book of proletarian short stories, NIGHT PEOPLE & OTHER TALES OF WORKING NEW YORK (2013). He is currently working on both a definitive history of revolutionary culture and a novel. As a musician performing on the free jazz and new music scene in NYC, Pietaro--a vibraphonist/percussionist--regularly works with Ras Moshe, Karl Berger, Harmolodic Monk, the Red Microphone, the 12 Houses and others. Over the years he has performed with Alan Ginsberg, Fred Ho, Amina Baraka, Roy Campbell, Will Connell, Steve Dalachinsky and many more. Pietaro is the founder and organizer of the annual Dissident Arts Festival and has established many other concerts connected to progressive and radical topics in both NYC and the Hudson Valley area of New York. In 2014 he created New Masses Media Relations, a publicity service for creative artists on the Left and in the underground.
